


the simpler things that you’ve long forgotten

by MorteLise



Category: RWBY
Genre: Abuse, Character Death, Flashbacks, Gen, Jinn is catty, Ozma is dead, Past Relationship(s), Salem is sad for a while but ultimately learns nothing, but also she uses it as an excuse to be even more awful, in her defense the gods are terrible teachers, the kind where Salem keeps murdering Ozma and trying to destroy his happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 00:20:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16629248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteLise/pseuds/MorteLise
Summary: Once upon a time, Remnant’s wicked witch also asked three questions of the genie in the lamp.And the genie revealed to her the great and terrible truth behind the reason for her lost love’s return.





	the simpler things that you’ve long forgotten

The Relic of Knowledge was as unbearably ostentatious as Salem had expected.

An enormous lantern of ornately crafted gold, lit into resplendence by a humming, luminescent blue glow. For knowledge is the light of mankind, showing the way into a brilliant future, and so on, and so forth, and oh, of course in his indefinite absence the God of Light had found a way to share his mindless drivel with others through unsubtle metaphor.

She approached the Relic with caution, quite certain that she was the only living thing left in the room but wary of any tricks either Ozma or the gods themselves might have left as a safeguard. The blood of Ozma’s latest meat-puppet trailed in her wake.

(She had given him every opportunity to surrender. She always did. And every time he turned her down with a look of such betrayal, as though she relished striking him down. Of course she didn’t; even now, she could never want his suffering. She only wanted him to stop standing in her way.)

A pulse of magic revealed nothing untoward and Salem sighed, casting a quick, rueful glance back at the cooling corpse behind her. Had he really thought he alone would be enough to hold her off? Even in his prime she’d regenerated too quickly for him to call it a proper victory, and unlike her he’d only grown weaker as time went on. Appallingly weak as of late, it seemed.

_Growing arrogant in your old age, Ozma?_

She lifted the lantern with a hand still caked in gore, ignoring her thrumming nerves as she inspected it.

All those centuries, and now she was so close to victory.

“Jinn,” she said, the name pried from some long-dead lieutenant of Ozma’s. An earnest soul whose stalwart devotion to her Ozma had quite frankly resonated in ways that drove her to hurt him more than was strictly necessary, but it had gotten her what she needed and there’d been something cathartic about watching that faith finally wither and die.

The fool had loved only a shadow anyway. To think Ozma had been reduced to peddling gilded lies about hope and justice to his followers now that his strength was failing him.

The lantern lit brighter and floated gently away when Salem spoke the name, blue smoke boiling out and coalescing into—

Hm.

So aside from some gaudy jewelry, the construct had the same fashion sense as their creators. How tasteful.

“Well,” Jinn purred, stretching languidly and fixing Salem with a lazy smile, “if it isn’t the prodigal daughter. What an honor it is to finally meet you, Salem. I’m sure you don’t need an explanation of what it is I do.”

Salem bit back a scowl. Of course the God of Light’s construct would be as insufferable as the deity himself.

“I’m familiar enough to know you weren’t created to make pleasantries, Jinn,” she replied with a joyless smile of her own.

The construct’s full lips puffed into a childish pout, eyes darting past Salem to the corpse with the raise of one delicate dark blue eyebrow. Curious. Observing. Not nearly human enough to be judgmental.

Jinn shrugged. “Consider yourself lucky, Salem, I still have all three questions left this century. Ask away.”

Careful, Salem. Steady. Take every precaution.

She clasped her hands together to calm her nerves, the action reminding her of how bloody they still were from her recent fight. No matter. It was worth it. She was here.

(He would be back.)

And now she could make them pay.

“Where are the other Relics?” she asked evenly.

Jinn smiled far too widely, and Salem’s stomach sank. “Why, safely locked away in their vaults, of course,” Jinn said with a flippant wave. The room dissolved into a white void and smoke spiraled out to reveal the remaining Relics, each suspended above pedestals in some empty desert expanse that sat wrong with Salem somehow.

“You caught Ozma on his way to deposit me in mine, in fact,” Jinn added. “He had a feeling I would be the one you went after first when you heard they were on the move, so he wanted to take care of the matter personally. The vaults are a very recent addition he’s made to the game; they stand safely outside traditional time and space in a pocket inspired by the afterlife he spends so very much time in. And each only accessible by one of four specific Maidens. Quite the ingenious design; one I had my fair share of input on if I don’t mind saying so myself. Now, if you’d like to know where the _vaults_ are, that would take a second question.”

Salem’s nails bit into her skin so deeply she drew blood.

Still a few tricks up his sleeve, then.

Well played, Ozma.

“Then here is my second question, Jinn,” she said after a moment of deliberation. “How can I procure the Maidens?”

The vaults’ location seemed like too easy bait. Between the Relics’ abilities and Ozma’s own vast compendium of knowledge, the spellwork on the locks was likely too impeccable for even her to break with brute force.

But making their access contingent on _humans_ —oh, Oz.

Humans were so easily swayed.

Jinn looked begrudgingly impressed that she hadn’t gone for the obvious question. “Their signature really is quite unique, in this day and age,” she said, smoke swirling to form into a nondescript young woman trailing magic firelight from both eyes. “The cost to his own power was great, but now six magic users walk Remnant instead of two. It’s been a while since we could say that, hasn’t it?”

Salem stiffened. She had never suffered a death that hurt her as much as the reminder of her daughters.

How dare she. _How dare she_.

Before Salem could properly express her rage the image of the generic figure vanished, to be replaced by a stooped old man and four young women of varying ages, all bright-eyed and smiling around him.

Salem’s heart lurched. Ozma, obviously—although she couldn’t recall ever having seen that face. And the women greatly resembled one another.

Sisters.

Wasn’t it enough that she found herself constantly pitted against one ghost?

“The vaults weren’t part of his intention when he empowered the originals,” Jinn continued, and his first meeting with the sisters unfolded in front of them. “No, they were simply kind, generous souls who took the time to cheer up an old man at his lowest, and he thought them better capable of spreading hope and salvation than he had become in his despair. A mission both parties agreed should continue on after their deaths. He trusted their judgment implicitly, and longed to give them the ability to choose their successors that he had been robbed of himself. And so he decreed that the last person in each Maiden’s thoughts would inherit her power, provided that person was a young woman herself.” She winked at Salem impishly. “I would say sentiment played a role in that caveat.”

It was a pity that the Relics were integral to Salem’s plans. She wondered what it would take to destroy one.

“Ozma stressed discretion in their good deeds and kind acts, determined to remain the only target you perceived as a threat. And for the most part the Maidens have since chosen their successors wisely. Enough so that he thought it better to entrust the safety of the Relics to them rather than himself.”

Jinn dissolved the long, stretching line of Maidens with a dismissive wave of her hand. “So, if you desire to possess the Maidens yourself, I would recommend keeping an eye out for minor miracles, sudden bursts of good fortune, quiet acts of divine intervention—not very distinguishable from the usual tall tales and superstitions at first blush, but the signs are still there. Changes in weather, inexplicably good harvests, windfalls of fortune—all these things follow in their wake. And you could always stack the deck in your favor by choosing your own candidates to inherit. Although that may take some—convincing, on the part of the Maiden you intend that candidate to succeed.”

Salem smiled, soft and private, at the ease with which the construct provided her the answers she needed. She wondered whether Jinn had been granted enough autonomy or true sentience of her own to feel at all conflicted about providing them. Was she screaming behind that vapid smile? Or had the God of Light gotten off his high horse long enough to create something truly objective?

The answer wasn’t important enough to waste a question on.

“He sees your daughters in each and every one of them,” Jinn added blithely, and that answered the question about her objectivity well enough.

The smile dropped off Salem’s face, a pressure building in her chest that she refused to manifest as a scream.

_Are our children so easily replaced, Ozma? With frail, simpering shadows and parlor tricks?_

She stared at the blood on her shaking hands again. All that time, all that death, and still he found ways to break her heart.

“Millions of lives were wiped off the face of the planet the day the gods left,” she hissed, voice wavering.

With rage. Only rage.

“And countless passed on before that,” she continued, volume rising. “There was a multitude of souls milling about in the afterlife after that genocide—some as just, some as powerful, who could’ve been chosen for the God of Light’s illustrious destiny so _why did he choose Ozma_?”

Salem regretted the outburst even as her words rang out into the void. She had let her temper get the better of her and wasted her final question on something she could easily answer herself. Maybe not the exact reason, but there were plenty that would fit the mold: Ozma had been a kind and righteous soul likely to accept the role without asking too many questions; he knew her well and stood the best chance of countering her; he had the charisma to sway people to his side, much like she did; he had been powerful and driven enough to succeed with all the other tasks put in front of him before illness struck him down—

“To punish you,” said Jinn.

Salem froze.

…What?

In her stunned silence, the white void turned black, stars winking into existence in swirls of blue smoke. A second pass of smoke left a coiled golden dragon suspended in wait. A great winged beast coalesced in fluid motion next, streaking across the empty space to join it.

The great golden head tilted to the side, disapproving.

“The moon was a bit much,” Light said, and a dark laugh rumbled from his brother.

“A parting shot,” Darkness hissed. “The ruin it left will hamper the planet’s healing. Let the little wretch stew a while longer in a barren wasteland before she gets her new batch of toy soldiers to play with.” His claws flexed. “It’s a resilient race we crafted, is it not? They have a lot in common with those weeds of yours.”

“As though your Grimm aren’t equally as stubborn to cling to existence,” Light replied, and looked surprised when Darkness growled. “I didn’t think your pride so easily wounded.”

“It’s her,” Darkness snarled. “That world has lost the right to its gods and the infidels paid the price for their insolence. All but Salem. And when humanity returns to the Remnant a shadow of its former self, who will be better suited to rule it? All that effort expended on her to drive the lesson home, and in the end we were the ones who conceded.”

“She may learn it yet,” said Light. “In her time alone, in watching that new race of man struggle to rebuild itself thanks to her selfish pride—”

“Because that worked so well when you made the brilliant decision to curse her with immortality,” Darkness sneered. “For a time, perhaps, she will mourn and rage as she did then. Feel some measure of loss. But she has been a dead, numb thing for ages, brother. The punishment no longer means anything to her. There is nothing left in the world she holds dear enough to care if she loses it.”

“You may be right,” Light murmured, long coils twisting and turning into fretful, knotted shapes. “If she is ever to learn, there may only be one person suited to the task.” He bowed his head. “Perhaps she did lose him too soon.”

Salem wrapped her arms around herself to stop her trembling. It barely helped.

No. _No._

Darkness’s shoulders shook in a derisive laugh. “After all your grandstanding, now you want to bend the rules? With the same mite that started this business in the first place, no less!”

“As you said, brother,” said Light, quick and over-defensive, “there is nothing left in the world she holds dear. So let me return to her something she does. Doing so should prove how much she’s strayed. Or learned.”

Darkness snorted. “You forget we won’t be there to see it.”

Light’s coils rippled in a full-bodied shrug. “No longer important. If he meant as much to her as she claimed, then his resurrection alone should provide her ruin or salvation.”

“In one paltry mortal lifetime?” scoffed Darkness. “I think we’ve well established she’s going to need more time than that. And throwing a second immortal into the mix doesn’t sound much better.”

Light hummed in disgruntled agreement. “True.” He brightened, a disgustingly literal act. “A compromise, then. The body dies and the soul endures. Touched by death where she is not, but still a constant presence.”

Darkness’s maw split into a serrated grin. “So she can watch him die, over and over again. How poetic.”

Salem was suddenly conscious of the blood still caked to her hands. She struggled to scrub it off, too horrified to look away.

Light touched a claw to his chin. “It will have to be his choice.”

_Not a true choice you lying bastard no one would agree to that outright—_

“Choice,” scoffed Darkness, cruel but infinitely less two-faced. “Only a fool would agree to those terms. And restoration of life and eternal reincarnation won’t tempt a righteous man.”

“No,” Light agreed thoughtfully. “A righteous man will need a mission.”

There was a scream rising in Salem’s throat. She tried to choke it down.

The torment they had cursed her with had been bad enough. But to do this to _Ozma_ —

Darkness perked up, wings spreading. “Yes,” he hissed. “And a mission will need stakes.” A claw flexed. “Something...important. Powerful. Tempting.” A sword manifested in his grasp. “A bauble that will catch his eye enough that he doesn’t look too closely at the terms.” Shadow bled from the sword and collected itself into a crown. “Or perhaps more than one bauble?”

“Gifts,” Light corrected. He flexed a claw of his own, a spear and lantern shimmering into existence. “To all mankind. Tempting him is too transparent. Asking him to safeguard something from the temptation of others, though—it was callous of us to leave our world bereft. Let us give the godless remnants a reminder of what came before.” He tapped the spear and lantern in turn. “Creation. Knowledge.”

Darkness gestured to the sword and crown. “Destruction. Choice.” He sneered at the second. “A gift...and a threat, perhaps? Each powerful enough alone, but brought together…” he trailed off uncertainly.

“Judgement,” said Light. He nodded to himself. “If all four are brought together, then we will return to judge mankind once more.”

Darkness cackled. “Excellent, I could use a good show. To see how the curtain closes on Salem, one way or another. Make it so, brother.”

Light glanced at him. “You won’t join me?”

“This tale needs a villain. Humanity’s destruction as my final act; its rebirth as yours. Present yourself as the savior, so he might see himself as one in turn.”

“He will be warned of the cost,” Light said, quiet and troubled. He shook his head. “A burden is a weight, and I will not present it as anything but. He will be an excellent lesson. But the fault is not his.”

“Don’t shed meaningless tears for your lamb to the slaughter,” spat Darkness. “Just go and lead him from the pen.”

The scene dissolved before Salem could let fly the fiery orb in her hand, and she reared her arm back to lob it at a newly forming shape.

And stopped.

The fire died.

Ozma.

The first Ozma, her Ozma, the one that had loved and lived and never betrayed her—she ran to him before she could stop herself, heart just for an instant lighter than it’d been in centuries. She opened her mouth to call his name—

“Ozma,” said the God of Light, and Salem and Ozma turned as one to look at him. The dragon reduced itself back into a horned man.

So she would get to hear exactly what tale the God of Light spun to set Ozma down his path.

Good.

“I know your secret now,” Salem snarled, placing herself between them. “So go on and weave your faulty tale, and I will dissemble it when I see him next and reveal you for the lying snake you are.”

With his true purpose and the gods’ duplicity revealed, surely Ozma would at last see sense.

This could be her victory yet.

“Where...am I?” Ozma asked, quiet and uncertain, and her heart nearly broke to hear him so young.

“We are between realms,” Light replied. “I’m afraid a tragedy has befallen your home at the hands of my brother.”

Salem punctuated that with a derisive laugh. Their wise and just god, always shifting the blame.

“We have chosen to depart this world,” Light continued, “but in our absence, I would like to offer you the chance to return to it.”

_And so his half-baked tale begins._

“I don’t understand,” said Ozma.

No of course not, it had been a poor explanation. How had he fallen for this farce?

“Mankind is no more, yet your world remains,” the God of Light said. “And in time, your kind will grow to walk its face once again. However, without our presence, they will be but a fraction of what they once were.”

“Perish the thought of anything flourishing in your absence,” Salem sneered.

The God of Light, projection that he was, waved an unheeding hand and produced the Relics. “Creation, destruction, choice and knowledge were the ideals upon which humanity was made.”

“Funny you didn’t mention that while you were still around to teach the lesson,” Salem drawled.

Gods. Such blowhards.

“Now I leave them behind with the hope that you will learn to remake yourselves.”

Salem waved a derisive hand. “And undo, and turn against, and all the other things you want demonstrated your sheep will do with an ounce of power when robbed of your _divine wisdom_.”

“If brought together, these four relics will summon my brother and I back to your world, and humanity will be judged. If your kind has learned to live in harmony with one another and set aside their differences, then we shall once again live among you, and humanity will be made whole once again.”

Salem laughed. “Whole. Is that what we were? Living lives full of just as many hardships under your thumb as they have since without?”

"But if your kind is unchanged, if you demand our blessings while still fighting amongst yourselves—”

“I UNITED THEM UNDER A WORTHY CAUSE, AND YOU SLAUGHTERED THEM FOR CHALLENGING YOU!” Salem screamed.

“—then man will be found irredeemable and your world will be wiped from existence. Until your task is complete, you will reincarnate—”

Ozma fell to his knees, overwhelmed by either the task or the indefinite sentence.

Good. So at least he’d felt some sense of trepidation about it from the start. Even if he’d been too blind to realize it was hopeless.

“—but in a manner that ensures you are never alone,” the God of Light finished.

Stealing lives and potentially bringing about a second apocalypse. What a destiny.

“This is what you agreed to, Ozma?” Salem said with an incredulous laugh. “This is what you bend and break and bleed for? Even if it hadn’t been their sorry excuse to punish me, I would think a verbatim reminder of the terms alone would get you to rethink your noble quest; even the two of us united couldn’t get the job done and he sentenced you to an endless litany of stolen lives to accomplish it! What part of it did you find worth the suffering—”

“I’m sorry,” Ozma said, and Salem halted her tirade to stare at him in shock, “but that world just isn’t as dear to me without her. If I may, I’d rather return to the afterlife to see Salem.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

He _hadn’t_ —

“You will not find her there,” said the God of Light.

When Ozma said he’d come back for her, it’d been romantic hyperbole, surely—

“You mean she isn’t gone?”

Salem clamped a hand over her mouth, eyes welling up with tears.

“Salem lives, but the woman you hold dear in your memories is gone.”

 _Not yet, not when you told him that, we were_ happy—

“Heed this warning,” the God of Light intoned, “where you seek comfort, you will only find pain. So, will you—”

“I’ll do it.”

Salem fell to her knees.

Just like that.

Ozma hadn’t even let him finish the question.

Not because he believed their empty promises. Their odious lies. Their bright shining Relics and grand destiny.

Just so to see her again. And how was she supposed to question that?

It’d been ages since Salem had last wept. But now she did so freely, reaching out a trembling hand to touch Ozma’s face.

_Was I worth it at the start? Was I—_

Her hand passed right through him. He was only a memory, after all.

(Ghosts and old regrets are all they have left now.)

“Very well,” she heard the God of Light say distantly, as the first keening sob escaped her lips. “Our creation rests within your hands.”

And then it was difficult to hear anything over her tears.

She didn’t know how long she lay there, collapsed in a heap in that empty void.

Unable to bear the weight of her own truth.

“Salem,” said the God of Light, and she froze.

She looked back up at him slowly, still a bedraggled mess.

Prostrate, as any good worshipper should be.

It was just the two of them, now. Ozma off to live his first new stolen life.

To reunite with her, live happily, and die broken.

And yet it was a relief he was gone. She couldn’t bear it if he’d been there to hear whatever the God of Light had to say to her.

“I leave this message for you,” the God of Light continued, and some of the tension eased from her shoulders. Still a projection after all.

“I hope you will never have to hear it.” So he’d left it because he liked to hear himself talk, had he? She could believe that.

“The circumstances under which I arranged that you would hear this were...specific,” he continued. “In short, it means you’ve failed again to learn the lesson we meant to teach you.”

She gritted her teeth.

Wasn’t a lesson so long unlearned the fault of the teachers?

“Your curse remains, and you stand willing to condemn humanity to extinction a second time.”

Condemnation. Extinction. Weren’t such things powers of the gods alone?

She wasn’t the one willing to wipe out two separate populations just to watch one woman finally bend the knee.

“I thought he would have a better chance at teaching you the value of life and death than our first attempt did,” the God of Light confessed ruefully. “You spoke so highly of him, once. If his good heart and own sense of righteousness didn’t help you learn, then watching the wear of his constant reincarnation surely would.”

Watch him suffer, Salem. Not exactly the charge of a benevolent god.

And watch him suffer she had. But Ozma was now so dedicated to the empty purpose the gods had given him that his reincarnation had become more habit than burden to even himself.

People adapted to change. Ozma was no different, so why would that teach her—

“Unless, of course, you no longer love him.”

She staggered back to her feet, teeth bared in a snarl.

Love. What did he know of love, in his empty eternal heart, all his creations worth less than dust to him once they lost their shine—

“There is a second lesson you’ve failed to learn here, Salem,” said the God of Light. He shook his head. “And that you missed it is a far greater failing than the first, because that second lesson is the one you tried to teach us.”

Salem narrowed her eyes.

And what could he possibly mean by that?

“ _I gave him back to you_ ,” the God of Light said. “The very request that brought you to me in the first place. That got you burdened with your curse, stranded on an empty world, and left to live eternally among outsiders. I bent the very same rules I once stood by to return the lost love you sacrificed so much for. The one you called integral to your happiness and contentment.”

He waved a prompting hand. “So what have you done with him?”

Her lips parted on an answer she couldn’t voice.

“You are beyond saving now, Salem,” the God of Light said, and with those parting words the void dissolved back into the little safehouse where she’d found the Relic.

Where she’d yet again cut down Ozma, his soul now fled from the mangled corpse behind her and on to some new host.

Salem stared blankly at her shaking, rust-stained hands. It had been ages since she’d felt so empty.

“You know, there is some good news,” Jinn said conversationally, manifesting back into the room as the last of her creations vanished, and Salem started, having nearly forgotten the construct was there.

Jinn smiled a sly, feline grin. “Unlike my average customer, if you’re not satisfied with your answers you can always come back in a hundred years to try again,” she sang out, and vanished with a bright, ringing laugh just as Salem obliterated the wall behind her.

The distraction was enough to make Salem miss the gout of flame aimed at her in turn, sending her flying backwards as her skin bubbled and cooked.

A young woman stood in the doorway, her eyes burning with bright green trails of magic firelight.

The Maiden responsible for Knowledge’s vault. Salem should’ve expected that Ozma would have backup.

More people came running up behind the Maiden, weapons drawn.

And quite a bit of backup, no less.

So why were they so terribly late?

(Because the risk was his own, first and foremost, when Salem was on the front lines.)

“Get the Relic before she recovers,” the Maiden snapped.

“Is that—is that Salem? Oh gods, on the floor, is Oz—”

“Grab it and go!”

“You grab it, we’ll hold her off. None of _us_ can open the vault—”

“And someone grab his cane—oh, Oz—”

The Maiden’s magic wasn’t strong enough to keep Salem down for long.

And she had run out of patience.

The Maiden escaped in the end, with the Relic and the cane. The whole team was singular in their mission to the last man. Ozma had taught them well.

None of the others survived. But killing them wasn’t nearly as cathartic as Salem had hoped it would be.

She stumbled out of the ruins and let her feet guide her, unsure of where to go or what to do; her head still full of ringing emptiness.

She was barely surprised when her wandering eventually brought her back home.

She hadn’t returned to the castle since the day she’d—since the day they’d brought it crashing down with their duel, centuries ago. Even Ozma must’ve, once, to recover his scepter.

All the time in the world couldn’t get rid of the ghosts.

Salem sat amid the rubble and did not think.

And thought too much.

And screamed, where none but the Grimm could hear her.

Eternity stretched out before her: an endless cycle of her and Ozma’s bloody war, of tearing each other to pieces only to rise again, of watching a bond once so pure turn gangrenous and poison two souls that could neither purge it nor die.

Both their noble purposes no more than empty lies.

He’d never believe her now, if she told him the truth of why the gods had sent him back. But then given the reason he’d taken the job in the first place, she supposed it didn’t matter.

“We finally had freedom,” she’d told him once.

Only he’d been her prison all along. And she had made of him a miserable prison indeed.

After weeks had passed and she grew tired of her own wailing, Salem tried the pool of Grimm again.

Futile, she knew.

But maybe a second time, maybe longer—

She stayed submerged even as the pool wracked her body, even as it seeped into her lungs and her heart and blackened her veins, pooled in her forehead—

In the end the pool itself rejected her.

She curled up next to it, bereft and shaking, a hand gripping at her long white hair.

What was left, the gods had taken _everything_ —

Something else began to emerge from the pool and at first she ignored it, long used to the Grimm that crawled their way into birth.

But then curved horns rose out of the muck, sprouting from a human head.

Salem froze in horror.

The God of Darkness.

She scrambled backwards as he lurched towards her, neck and spine contorting as he reached one long, dark hand out to grasp at her arm—

“Stop!” she shouted desperately, and to her surprise it did.

She struggled to slow her racing heartbeat as she examined the half-emerged creature properly.

Not the true god. Her fear made manifest.

She smiled. And this imitation she could control.

“Let’s give you a face,” she murmured, and the tar still clinging there bubbled and sloughed off to reveal a skull mask, its gaping maw lined and sealed with long, thin teeth.

Her smile widened. “And how would he look a corpse?” she purred, and the creature’s torso withered away into an empty ribcage. “Oh, poor dear. Ridden off into a battle he couldn’t win.”

The bottom half of the creature rose out of the muck as a horse, and while she admitted she hadn’t intended to be so literal, she liked the image it presented.

She had created Grimm before, and quite often back when she had been alone in the world. But always in the remembered images of what the God of Darkness had created, or imitations of animals.

But this—this was something new.

Salem flexed her fingers and watched the thing let out a tortured scream as it contorted—the only voice she allowed it. She released it with a soft laugh, and it stared at her with two pairs of dead eyes.

“Thank you,” she said to it warmly. “I needed the reminder.”

The gods would still pay for what they’d done.

Nothing had changed, not really. They still needed to suffer consequences for their own actions. And if her and Ozma’s terrible cycle was part of her punishment, she would simply break it.

She needed to stop hurting him. Fine. She would never see him again.

Salem restored the ruined castle with a dismissive wave of her hand. She could conduct her business well enough from home. Do her work through proxies, sway men’s hearts as she had once done so long ago. Getting her own hands dirty had served her well for a time—driving home the difference in power between herself and Ozma had disillusioned so many of his followers—but with clever enough followers of her own, mankind would have nowhere to point fingers but at each other.

Ozma had borne her cruelty long enough. Maybe subjecting him to man’s cruelty instead would finally wake him up to the futility of his mission as she never could.

But she still had one last task to take care of in man’s world, first.

She couldn’t track down the Maidens by herself, after all.

She covered herself from head to toe in pale clothing, making sure to show nothing more than her eyes, and set to work.

A dozen towns, she thought, would lay down the foundation—rural but within travel distance of a city, scattered evenly across the continents, and all down on their luck.

(The story would need a gimmick—the sad old man and four cheerful sisters were all well and good, yes, but ‘Maiden’ by itself was not especially original or distinctive. And she would need a way to distinguish between which unlocked what vault. Their powers were cyclic and seemed elemental in nature—ah, the four seasons should do nicely.)

Anonymity had been the right idea, with all that power. But once the secret was out, the turnover rate was sure to be spectacular.

(Find meaning in your Maidens now, Ozma. Find comfort. He of all people should’ve known how dangerous power was.)

Salem reached her first town in the nick of time, just as a swarm of Grimm descended on the terrified townsfolk.

Or at least that was how the townsfolk saw it, she was sure.

She made sure to put on a brilliant display—bursts of flame and gusts of wind, shards of ice and jags of stone—oh, they were treated to quite a show. And her clothing hid all the unnaturalness of her warped body.

All but her eyes, trailing a distinctive bright red firelight.

The townsfolk swarmed her after, like sheep or roaches, babbling gratitude and awe. She accepted it graciously, not there to play the god.

“What _are_ you?” a little girl asked, wide-eyed and curious, and as her frantic parents hushed her Salem smiled at hearing the question she’d been waiting for.

She knelt down and took the girl’s hands with a new legend readied on her lips.

“What is your favorite fairy tale?”


End file.
